CoP 3 Lecture 1

My CoP 3 lecture 1 notes, they have been helpful in preparing me for the vast organisation and focus of the dissertation project written aspect, which I will be getting fully underway with in the coming days. 

CoP 3 Proposal

This is my updated proposal form for the context of practice project I am working on at Uni now, it is basically the third year essay I need to write and will consist of about 7000-9000 words (woohoo). I decided I didnt want to let this essay be like the others in the sense that I would put it off for a while and not really want to do it unless I have to so I thought hard about what I could write about that really inspires me and that I find interesting. I came up with archetypes in games, I have always wanted to do some form of game art and specifically it has been game characters that I have connected with and which inspire me. 

With the proposal form completed I can get straight to work on initial sketches and ideas, this will all be going into my thought process work which I will reflect on and advance further with written research. I have been told to go out and get as many sources and research as possible before diving into the practical element of the dissertation but I think I will be fine doing a little bit of practical work first as I know how hard this module will be to motivate myself to work at and so I have to have a little bit of incentive to at least break into the workload and think that my work will work best for me. 

I think the proposal for explains what I want my project to be about fairly well and with it complete feel a lot better and ready for the bulk of the module. Now just to write 9000 words...

PPP Freelance Invoicing

http://enliighten.com/blog/freelance-basics-invoicing-with-billings/

So I have been spending my time usefully and looking up good ways to start professionally keeping track of any work I have or might have in the future, Daarken as usual did a really useful tutorial on how to use the Mac only program Billings, I have downloaded this and given it a go and think that it is good for what it does.

What it does is keeps a record in an easy to tell apart sort of graph that you can edit and update easily, it has split sections and timed sections and basically anything that you could perceive needing in an invoicing program.

I am glad that I found this as it is one less thing to worry about when going out in to the industry and am sure it will be a big help in the near future (Hopefully) :P

PPP3 Work over the summer

Over the summer I have worked on a few styles of digital painting that I want to advance in, I have been again looking at digital art tutorials online and have generally been keeping practice up. A few things I am quite happy with that I have recently started doing are portraits, I started doing them just for fun but then when a portrait I did of the actor Tom Hiddleston as Loki and it gathered a little bit of popularity on DeviantArt I decided to do a few more, some of which are below.

I have been a lot more active online the past few months as I have kept up with posting on DA and have even started up a few other accounts on sites like Twitter, Conceptartworld and CGHub. This really helps with keeping up to date with what new artists are doing to become recognised and makes it easier to understand what level I have to be at to break in to the industry. Anyway I am happy with the work I have done and feel that as long as I keep up my practice then Ive got a lot more to give than a few portraits :P.

Back Again!

So this will be my first post in 5 months and it has been quite a nice break but its now time to get back to work. Before the summer holidays we were told to research into some initial ideas that we might want to discuss in our dissertation but not dissertation? anyway I did do a little bit of research as I have eventually learned over the 3 years here that getting things done early is a must. I looked at character design books as well as a lot of game concept art books some of which I have bought specifically for the sake of this CoP module. I enjoy reading these sort of books anyway so it kind of felt like the research was too easy or I was sort of cheating, but I did get a lot of interesting points that I have noted down to further develop and research later. So I guess even though I feel like I havent done much I think I am well prepared for the CoP module and have more base research then I realiesed to start working with.

I also kept up with my practical work as I have been sketching as much as I could and still looking at tutorial videos and inspirational artists and work so on that front I feel I have been doing rather well. I have been working on portraits more than I usually do in my personal development but they seem to have more interest online than my other stuff. Heres one of the pics I have done in my own time, it was done on request for a woman in america so I guess it was a request / commission which I was happy about. I will be creating a separate blogpost discussing my PPP work in more detail for my summer work.

The second year of DFGA went so fast that I am a little worried the same will happen again, although this time I feel confident that I am up to the challenge as I managed just fine last year and want to tackle this coming year head on and put as much effort into it as possible.

Bring on DFGA 3rd year!